


Rough Justice

by JusticeAU



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Abuse, Biting, Blood, Dubious Consent, Humiliation, Hurt, M/M, Orgasm Denial
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:26:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24941542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JusticeAU/pseuds/JusticeAU
Summary: Akechi decides to show his true colors.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira
Comments: 4
Kudos: 92





	1. Customer Service

**Author's Note:**

> please do not proceed without reading the tags/warnings! this fic is pretty spicy! don't say I didn't want you. if that's what you're here for go ahead. Starts off mid-october I guess

“I’m heading out. Don’t forget to lock up.”

Akira nods as Sojiro strolls through the cafe and out the door. Akira & Morgana had parted ways after school ended, and the feline’s still out who-knows-where. Akira isn’t particularly concerned, though, that cat’s more resourceful than most might give him credit for. _Is he really a human like he claims?,_ he muses. _He’s certainly not a normal cat, at least._

He has a pencil that he’s spinning around his fingers and various study papers before him. English. Yuck. He laments to admit it, but it’s one of his struggle subjects. He somewhat envies Ann’s prowess in the language, though she has years of real-world practice to thank for that.

Startling him from his thoughts comes the _ring_ of the bell above the door.

“Ah, Akira, fancy seeing you here.”

That familiar greige suit, attache case, black gloves, wavy brown hair. Warm brown eyes that seem to pierce right through you.

“Akechi.”

He smiles at Akira, the practiced TV-boy smile that feels more stilted the more you look at it. He gives the cafe a once-over. “Oh, is this place closed for the night? Let me get out of your hair, then.”

“Wait.” Akira pushes himself from the booth as Akechi turns, then stops. “The usual?”

Another smile, this time perhaps more genuine. “I would greatly appreciate that.”

Akechi is perched on the barstool while Akira carefully pours the water over the ground beans. The smell weaves its way through the air, wrapping around them, soothing and invigorating. Akira could never get tired of it, as long as he lives.

He pushes the cup across the counter.

“Thank you,” Akechi blows on the hot coffee to cool it. His eyes are cast down, covered in shadow.

“Long day?”

“Hm. You could say that,” he pauses. “May I… air some grievances?”

Akira nods, softly, leaning against the counter.

“This is one of the only places I feel I can truly… relax. Everywhere I go, fans, cameras, questions, autographs. It’s so tiring. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to not be exhausted. Even in my own home, I’m haunted by it. That me on the screen? That isn’t me at all. The real me is just so _tired._

“Oh, but look at me. Complaining to you after all you’ve been through. My life must seem like a dream in your eyes.”

Akira shakes his head. “I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to be in the spotlight all the time. I don’t think I could do it.”

Akechi laughs, but it’s low, hollow. He’s shedding the skin of show business detective prince to expose raw, overworked, jaded skin. At first glance, it seems far removed from Akira’s forthright daily life, but his outwardly reticent self hides the grandiose Phantom Thief underneath. The two of them could be seen as just inverts of each other.

Akechi turns his gaze upward, “Perhaps this is impertinent of me to say, but I envy you. Even after all you’ve been though, you remain so… blithe. Unbothered. I wish I had the luxury of doing so.”

Akira considers this. “You could.”

Akechi glares daggers at him. “You don’t know that.”

“I know more than you know.”

The harsh edges of tension start to rise up between them. Gazes meet and neither dares break eye contact.

The silence shatters as Akechi laughs again, though this time it’s full and practically echoes through the small building.

“What are you hiding in there, Akira?” Akechi pushes on the counter to rise from his chair, eyes still locked with Akira’s, endlessly searching each other for something unknown.

Akira, of course, is bluffing his ass off. Can Akechi see right through it? Nothing of his expression suggests either way.

“I could ask the same.”

Several seconds of pause, before Akechi returns to his seat, bringing his cup to his lips to sip his coffee. “You’re really something else,” shaking his head, setting down his cup. “May I ask you something?”

Akira cocks his head.

“What are your parents like?”

He muses; removes his apron, around the counter, into the seat on Akechi’s left. “Normal, I suppose. My mother’s an actress, and my father is a teacher.”

“An actress, huh? Would I know her?”

Akira shakes his head. “Mostly just local theatre.”

“And teacher? What does he teach?”

“History.”

Normally Akechi felt as though he was dominating the conversation with him, however perhaps it’s just because Akira doesn’t have much to say in the first place.

“We weren’t particularly well off but we made ends meet,” As though he can hear Akechi’s thoughts, Akira continues. “After my… incident, they didn’t want me hurting their reputation further, so they sent me here. They didn’t even know Sojiro, really, just a friend-of-a-friend sort of thing.”

Sip. “Tell me more about this incident. If you’re comfortable doing so, of course.”

Akira recounted the events as Akechi silently sipped his drink.

“Hm. Dare I say, that was quite… bold of you. I wouldn’t expect that of you.”

“There’s a lot of things you wouldn’t expect of me.”

“That’s something we have in common, isn’t it?” Akechi takes this comment in stride, much to Akira’s surprise. “I keep finding myself… drawn to you, somehow. You’re positively… alluring.”

“Am I supposed to take that as an advance?”

Akechi laughs. “You can take it however you’d like. As strange as it may sound, I can’t exactly pinpoint how I feel about you. Alluring doesn’t even begin to cover it. You’re reserved and yet you’re audacious. You fascinate me, and you infuriate me.”

Akira raises his eyebrow. Where is he going with this?

Akechi leans towards him, just a couple inches, but enough to seemingly warm the air between them. “You drive me insane. I’ve never been so utterly stumped by someone as I am by you.”

“The feeling is mutual,” Akira mutters, “I get the feeling that there’s a lot to you that I’ve yet to surmise.”

Akechi tilts his head towards him, holding eye contact; he smirks. “I drive you insane?”

Akira tries to hide his bewilderment but a small gasp slips anyway. Akechi’s gaze is both pure fire running down his skin, and a skewer holding him firmly in place. He… can’t remember a time where he felt quite like this.

Akechi is acutely aware of the effect he has on the man before him. Control. That’s what it’s about. That’s what he strives for. The moment he loses control, it’s all over. Every single day, perceiving, analyzing, deciphering everyone around him, bending over backwards to keep them around his finger.

Akira closes the gap between them by lightly resting his fingertips on Akechi’s chest. Akechi looks amused. Seconds pass with only the sound of their breathing between them.

Akira’s hand snaps up to grip the knot of Akechi’s tie, twisting it to dig into his throat.

Akechi’s eyes snap open wide as his hand reaches up to grasp at Akira’s. “What the fuck are you doing!” Instead of pulling away, Akechi lunges at Akira, knocking both of them from their chairs. They slam into the hardwood flooring.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Akira hisses, voice sharp but restrained, “and it’s not going to work. I—“

He’s cut off by Akechi’s hand shooting up to the other man’s throat, digging his thumb underneath his jaw. “Yeah? And what is it I’m trying to do?” His demeanor slips as the rage that festers within him starts to bubble to the surface. “Nothing to say, huh? Cat got your tongue?”

Akira snakes his hand up behind him, taking a fist-full of hair. Akechi’s head snaps back; he grits his teeth. The two struggle on the hard floor, Akechi with the upper hand, but just barely; Akira manages to throw him off and into one of the chairs.

“I can see what you do to people,” Akira spits out. “It’s all just an act. You’re not some brilliant pretty boy. You’re a vulture.”

“Is that so? That hurts, Joker.”

Akira doesn’t even attempt to hide his shock. “How do you know about that?”

Akechi just laughs, venomous and haunting. His wicked smile splits his face in two.

Akira quickly goes through his options—run for the door? The attic? Rush him? Fake him out? He had known that there was something deep within Akechi, something that ran hard and fast completely against the grain of his outer self. Standing before him, it’s ripping hot, sharper than any blade, and so much more terrifying than he could ever have guessed.

There’s something… thrilling about it, however. Primal. Guttural, visceral. An amalgamation of feelings swirl through Akira that he’s never known before.

Akechi takes advantage of Akira’s stagger to lunge for his neck again, this time yanking his jaw up to turn his head back as far as it’ll go. As Akira’s hands reach up to pull him off, Akechi dives down and sinks his teeth into the soft flesh of his neck.

Akira cries out at the sudden pain, clawing at Akechi to pull him off.

“Just looking at you makes me want to rip you to pieces.” Akechi growls. “Always getting in my way, threatening my missions.” He shifts to pull his hips up and straddle Akira over the stomach. “But look at you now. I knew the leader of the Phantom Thieves was weak but it seems I had still overestimated you.”

Akira turns his head in a futile attempt to hide the heat flaring in his cheeks.

Akechi grabs onto Akira’s wrist, digging his nails in and using it to twist his arm back. Akira bites down on his lip.

“Look at yourself! You’re _enjoying_ it!” Akechi pulls as hard as Akira’s arm will go; tears start to cloud his grey eyes.

He can’t exactly deny it, but it’s humiliating to hear him say it. He loves when Akechi would go out of his way to spend time with him, confide in him, it made him feel loved, special. Seeing the slightly older man expose his true self in this moment, it’s thrilling, but unnerving. How is he supposed to feel about this? How _does_ he feel? It’s all happening so fast, rushing at him, overwhelming h

The pain shooting through his other arm snaps him back. Akechi has him by both wrists, and pulls them back to pin them behind his head. The initial shock of lightning through his muscles quickly blooms into a tingling heat running through his nervous system.

Akechi shifts his weight as he moves his left knee back to hike it up between Akira’s legs.

A gasp slips from Akira at the sudden pressure. He doesn’t move it but instead holds deathly still as Akira squirms and twists underneath him. Akechi leans forward to put his lips to the other man’s ear.

“You’re so fucking eager. You’re such a dirty little _whore!”_ He presses further into his groin, to the point that Akira isn’t sure where on the line he sits between pleasure and raw pain.

Sucking air through his teeth, Akira yanks his arm out from Akechi’s grasp, causing the man on top to slip just enough for Akira to shove him and use his own center of gravity to turn him onto his back. Before Akechi can react, he takes his arm and pulls it down, twisting. “Bold words for someone who can’t seem to control himself around me.”

Akechi laughs, perhaps in amusement, rage, or some mix of the two. “Are you kidding? Do you see yourself? Just a little attention and you completely unravel! I’m doing you a _favor!”_

The two struggle on the hard floor, both desperately trying to gain the upper hand but fairly evenly matched. Akechi, unafraid to play dirty, tightens his fingers into a fist and socks Akira across the left cheekbone.

“Fuck!” He cries out, instinctively reaching his hand up to touch the budding injury. Before Akechi can capitalize on it though, Akira ducks his head down, pressing his nose up underneath his jawline and biting down on his neck, creating a mark to mirror his own. He succumbs to the adrenaline rushing through his veins, smothering anything in his head resembling apprehension or coherent thought, really. Instinct is the only thing left, pushing him forward as though his life depends on it. In some strange way, maybe it does. Akechi reminds him of a feral animal in this state, ravenous, and ready to take whatever he wants, at any cost.

Akechi reaches up to dig his nails into Akira’s face and pulls it to his own in a harsh, sloppy kiss. Akira melts into it, mashing their tongues together, warm and wet and rough. He reaches up to pull at Akechi’s tie.

“Have some fucking patience for once, will you?”

Akira doesn’t care. He’s let himself go to the hunger and he’ll die on the spot if he isn’t fed.

Akechi takes Akira by the neck and hoists him to the side, sliding him across the floor to shove him up against the side of the booth seat. “Sit,” he commands and Akira obliges. He pulls himself on top to straddle him again.

“No touching. If you touch me, I stop.” He whispers, before slowly moving to unbutton Akira’s uniform jacket.

Akira can feel his heart pounding in his chest as he struggles against every fiber of his being, begging him to reach out and touch the man on top of him. Soon his jacket and shirt underneath are shed and haplessly tossed aside, leaving the skin of his arms and torso exposed to the air; he shivers. Akechi leaves a trail of, kisses? bites? something like that down Akira’s neck and shoulder. He bites down, hard, until Akira is whimpering and Akechi can taste rust. He starts to grind on him as he slowly covers his chest and upper arms in bruises and broken skin.

The feel of their erections pressed together without any sort of release, without being able to reach out and touch him, drives Akira absolutely insane. He’s unraveling and unwinding beneath him, beyond any hope of repair. Even if he wanted to, he can’t stop the expletives flowing from his mouth.

“You’re so fucking _loud._ You don’t want the neighbors to hear, do you? Or are you into that?”

Akira can only manage to shake his head.

“Look at you. _Filthy!_ Now anyone who looks at you will know that you’ve been _defiled_ at my hands!”

“Please…” he gasps.

“Please? Please what?”

“I—I need it…”

“You don’t _need_ anything!” Akechi growls. “You will take what I so graciously give you!” He uses the table to pull himself to his feet. “Take the rest of it off. Now.”

Akira scrambles to pull off his shoes and pants.

“Everything.”

And his socks, and his underwear, and glasses. He doesn’t need them to see, but he feels… naked without them. Somehow more so than being completely exposed on the floor of Leblanc. A few lines of blood lazily drip down from his skin to small pools on the floor. He shivers again.

Akechi laughs. “You’re a disgrace. Not even a hint of a struggle? You’re so ready to let yourself go to me, it’s _pathetic.”_ He kicks Akira right in the stomach, causing him to cry out and double over in pain. He pulls at his tie to loosen it and untie it. “Touch yourself,” he orders him as he unbuttons his shirt.

Akira doesn’t question the command and reaches down to jerk himself off and try to relieve some of the tension building in his core. He steals glances at Akechi stripping but something about it feels forbidden, proverbial cookies from the cookie jar. Akechi gracefully slips off the last of his clothes, folding them neatly and setting them on the table. Akira is practically drooling at the man before him, incredibly slim figure with a touch of muscle rippling underneath.

Akechi crouches down and Akira attempts to pull him towards him, but Akechi slaps him across the face.

“Do _not_ touch me,” growling, “I won’t have you besmirching me with your _filthy_ hands.” Despite this statement, Akechi takes a hold of Akira’s hips and drops his head down to take him in.

Akira screams at the wet heat, filling his senses, pouring over, shattering him into pieces. Akechi moves with expertise, knowing exactly what spots to hit with his tongue to completely wreck him. The overwhelming pleasure makes Akira lose what grip he had left on his surroundings.

Akechi moans as Akira starts to twitch, jerking his hips as though he’s about to burst.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, oh my _god,”_

Akechi quickly releases his grip just before Akira can let himself go.

“No! No, please, Akechi, _please,”_

“Beg all you want,” Akechi’s voice is somewhere between a laugh and a hiss, “it won’t make a difference.”

Tears spill over Akira’s long dark eyelashes, rolling down his face and splashing onto the ground next to the drops of blood. His entire body feels so tightly wound that he’s surely going to snap any second now—he looks over at Akechi through the tears, at his vile expression, slick red blood smeared on his left cheek, and suddenly feels like puking his guts out.

Akechi stands; “On your knees.”

Akira rubs his eyes and obeys.

“You’re not allowed to finish before I do,” Akechi snarls as he takes a fist-full of Akira’s hair and forces him to return the favor.

Akira squeezes his eyes shut as his mouth is violated, hot, salty, slimy. He chokes and gags but Akechi refuses to give him even the smallest amount of slack, moving his head for him; Akira can barely breathe, and he feels like he might throw up, pass out, or both if this continues. Fear ripping through his body and pleasure throbbing at his legs, he can’t tell if this is a dream or a nightmare. It all tangles together, messy and confusing; he doesn’t have the mental capacity to even begin to sort through it. Fight, flight, or freeze has taken over, and when fight and flight both fail, he’s left to just take whatever comes to him as best he can, swirling his tongue in a desperate attempt to please. The harder he works, the faster oxygen will be returned to him.

Stars begin to dance in the edges of his vision when Akechi finally lets him go. Akira gasps and coughs as he falls to the ground, while Akechi moans and continues to pleasure himself at his own hand; Akira can feel his heart pounding in his chest, working overtime to make up for the lack of air. His head is still spinning, tears rolling down his face, limbs splayed across the ground.

Akechi moans, shudders, and then Akira feels something hot and sticky splash across his face, his chest; a drop lands in his mouth. He barely registers it.

“Hm,” Akechi hums as he picks Akira’s jacket off the ground and uses it to clean himself off. He drops it, pulls his own clothes from the table, unfolds, and slips into them. He leaves his tie off, instead placing it in his attache case, and the top two buttons unbuttoned.

Akira can hear Akechi step towards him; he opens his eyes to Akechi’s own brown ones looking down on him. He almost looks… gentle. Peaceful. Akechi spits into Akira’s open mouth.

He turns on his heel, shoes softly clicking as he heads toward the door.

“Excellent customer service; five stars.”

_Ring._

Akira pulls in on himself, wrapping into as tight of a ball as he can manage. The cold air brings goosebumps to the surface of his skin. He lies there on the ground, sticky, bloody, filthy, _defiled_ for who knows how long.

The sound of the bell above the door rings again, but he hasn’t the energy to look up.

“I thought I told you to lock up—Jesus Christ!” Sojiro’s deep voice rings through the cafe.

Akira peers up, and he can just make out the sheer horror on Sojiro’s face. He can’t even begin to guess how pathetic he must look right now.

“Oh my god, _Jesus,_ what happened to you?”

Joker doesn’t answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a grand old time playing with the dynamic between Akechi and Joker, I like these two a lot and while I wouldn't say I ship them in the traditional sense, I think there's some interesting tension between them and a lot of potential. was just gonna be a one-shot but then I had a lot of ideas on how to continue it so I’ll probably be toying around with this for at least a little while


	2. Stipulation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What else is there to take from him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey look at me actually continuing something, who can believe it? it's small but hopefully I do really want to continue it I promise

Sojiro can’t help but stare at shock at the boy curled up on the floor of the cafe, naked, bloody, shivering, unresponsive. Akira’s eyes are open but he otherwise looks dead.

“Jesus, okay, hold on,” Sojiro rushes behind the counter to grab a cloth, wet it, and crouches down beside Akira. He pulls the pair of slacks off the floor and hands them to him. “Can you, uh, can you put these on?”

Sojiro turns his head as Akira fumbles to pull his slacks on. Sojiro squeezes his eyes shut, trying not to think about what happened to put this poor kid in this state. He might not be his father, but he feels damn close to it. When Akira is somewhat more decent, his damn-close-to-a-father carefully presses the damp cloth to his skin. Akira sucks a breath in through his teeth.

“Shit, I’m sorry, I just, I gotta clean these.” As he starts to clean the blood off, it becomes apparent that they’re bite marks. Human, deep ones. A couple particularly bad ones are oozing, but they’ve mostly started to calm down. They dapple his skin from his jawline all the way down to about the bottom of his ribcage. A black eye is just starting to bloom over his left eye.

“I’m sorry,” Akira mumbles as Sojiro goes to get a new, clean cloth.

“Excuse me? What the hell are you sorry for? Unless you mean this is a, a prank or something? You do this to yourself?”

Akira just looks down at the ground.

“That’s what I thought.”

Sojiro pauses. What does he say? What the hell is there to say to this? Does he ask him to talk about it? Who did this? Offer to let him sleep on the couch? What if Futaba woke up to see him like this in their living room? Well, she’s close enough to him that she’s going to see him soon enough.

He works on bandaging him up as he tries to find the right answer. Eventually, he settles on “Let me know if you need anything from me. Anything.”

Akira nods.

Sojiro stands, hesitates. He hates the idea of just leaving him here, but he has to sleep eventually. He can’t even remember what he came here for. He holds out his hand and Akira takes it; pulls him up, leads him to one of the barstools. Picks up the one tipped over on the floor and puts it upright. Moves to the refrigerator, pulls out a piece of chocolate cake, a fork, sets them down on the counter.

Wordlessly, Akira takes a careful bite.

~~~

“You know, I don’t know if I really buy that the Phantom Thieves are behind all those deaths, though.” Takemi sips her coffee. “What do you think, boss?”

Sojiro shakes off the daydreams. “Oh, the Phantom Thieves? I don’t really care either way. Hey, uh, Takemi,” as he steps to the opposite side of the counter, closer to the booth she’s seated at. It’s the same table that Sojiro had gathered up Akira’s school materials and brought up to the attic that morning, before Akira had awoken. He would bet that the kid is still asleep. He doesn’t know that it’s also the table where Akechi had set his clothes before having his way with Akira.

She peers over at him, raising one eyebrow.

“How do you, uh, how do you help someone who’s going through a hard time? Like when something rough happens?”

“I’m not a psychologist.”

“I know, I know, I just,” he sighs, “I don’t really know who to ask. I’m worried about the kid.”

“Akira? What about him? Did something happen?”

Sojiro shakes his head, “I don’t know. Well, yeah, but he won’t talk about it. I don’t blame him. I just don’t know what to do. He’s banged up pretty bad.”

She considers this. “Too bad to leave the house? Take him out, get his mind off it. Bond a bit while you’re at it.”

Speak of the devil, Akira comes padding down the stairs, dressed in his normal casual clothes, except with a heather grey scarf around his neck.

“Oh hey, just in time, I just whipped up a fresh batch of curry. Let me get you a plate.”

‘Next up, we have Detective Prince himself to give us his thoughts! Akechi-kun, you said that you thought the Phantom Thieves were unlawful, but you seemed to have changed your mind! Tell us about it!’

Akira feels his stomach lurch; he flees to the bathroom, just in time to retch over the toilet. Nothing comes up except burning hot stomach acid.

“Stomach bug?” Takemi asks from the doorway.

“Something like that.”

~~~

“Hey man, what’s with the scarf?”

“I think it looks nice, Akira-kun!”

“Yeah, Ryuji!”

“What! I was just asking a question!”

Makoto sighs. “Anyway, Akira’s lovely fashion choices aside, we have business to take care of.”

“You mean, deciding what our next steps are.” Yusuke shifts his weight to his other leg.

“Everyone thinks we’re murderers…” Futaba says quietly from Akira’s desk chair.

“This is bullshit! The Phantom Thieves would never kill anyone! Can’t they see that?!”

“People believe what they want to. One slip and our entire reputation changes overnight,” Morgana swishes his tail.

Ann twists a lock of hair around her finger. “There’s gotta be some way we can change their minds though, right?”

“The truth will always make itself known.” Akira adds in his low voice.

“That may be true,” Makoto responds, “but that doesn’t exactly help us right now. We have to act quickly, we have no idea what sort of repercussions are in store due to this slipup.”

Yusuke: “Is it really a slipup though?”

Ryuji: “Yeah, we did everything the same as we always have!”

Haru: “We don’t know that for sure… this operation was on a larger scale than anything the Phantom Thieves have taken on before, right? Maybe there was a different factor involved that we didn’t consider.”

Ann: “But we have no idea what that could even be…”

Makoto: “I think right now, we need to focus more on damage control than figuring out what went wrong. I think it’s entirely possible that it was nothing on our part, but instead the doing of this other Metaverse user.”

Akira: “You mean, like we’ve been set up?”

Makoto: “That’s exactly what I mean.”

Morgana: “We can’t rule that out.”

Yusuke: “But that would mean we’re being watched much too closely for comfort.”

Futaba: “They could even know our identities…”

Makoto: “Futaba, is there any way the police or a third party could track our chat logs?”

Futaba: “There is, but I’ve been checking for tampering and I haven’t noticed anything--at least, for the chat logs.”

The group all look to her in question.

She continues, “The Phan-Site however… I found code in there that I didn’t recognize. It’s all… messy. Total copy-paste. This person obviously had almost no idea what they’re doing. They did manage to skew the voting results though… in favor of Okumura.”

The group all sigh.

In this moment, Akira has a decision to make. If he tells the group that Akechi knows about them being the Phantom Thieves, he risks them finding out about last night; but if he doesn’t, he’s putting the entire group in danger.

He knows better. Knows he should tell them. But something in him can’t. Something in him desperately wants to protect Akechi, they can talk about this, he can figure _something_ out with him. He wants to believe in him.

Ann: “This is all getting to be so much more than any of us could have guessed, isn’t it?”

Morgana: “You’re not giving up on us now, are you, Lady Ann?”

Ann: “Of course not! I’m just saying what we’re all thinking…”

Makoto sighs. “Well, as important as this is, we also have to discuss the matter of the school festival.”

Ryuji: “We’re not really gonna invite that prick Akechi, are we?”

Akira can’t help but reach up to scratch at his neck. The fresh beginnings of scabs are starting to tug at his skin. The concealer feels cakey and suffocating on the left side of his face.

Ann: “I mean, they all voted for him. It’d be super suspicious if we didn’t.”

Ryuji: “Well, lets just say he declined!”

Haru: “I think we should invite him. It’s what the students want, right? As long as we’re careful, I think it should be alright.”

Makoto: “I agree. However, that does bring up the issue of, how do we contact him?”

Ann: “It’s not like any of us have his number…”

Akira speaks before he knows what he’s doing. “I do.”

Ryuji: “For real?!”

Yusuke: “As always, our leader has another surprise up his sleeve.”

Futaba: “Yeah, way to go, Akira!”

Makoto: “Can I entrust you to talk to him, then? I feel he’ll be more inclined to accept if it’s you asking.”

Akira, desperately trying to hide whatever these intense feelings are, “Sure.”

Morgana: “All right, I think that about covers it today. Anything else on the agenda before we wrap up?”

No one has anything to add; the team disband, all collecting their things and exchanging goodbyes before disappearing down the stairs, one by one. Soon enough it’s just Akira and Morgana.

“Do you want to make that call to Akechi now, then? We don’t have much time before the festival.”

Akira nods, pulls out his phone. He stares at the contact. Akechi, Goro.

Something in his heart pulls tightly, threatening to split him apart entirely. What are these emotions rising in his gut? It should be dread, fear, unease, but it’s mostly… excitement? Is that what this is? The way that he had melted around Akechi has not been wiped away, but instead, perhaps even magnified. Then why did he throw up at the just the sound of his name? He shakes the confusion from his thoughts and hits the call button.

A few seconds of ringing. Akira’s heart is threatening to beat right out of his chest and splatter on the floor.

“Ah, Akira. So nice to hear from you.”

“Akechi. I have something to ask of you.”

“Oh? And what might that be?”

Akira takes a deep breath in a futile attempt to calm himself. “My school festival is coming up in a couple days. The students voted on a special guest, and they voted for you.”

“You’re asking if I’d come to your school festival to speak as a guest? Hm.” Pause. “Is there anyone in the room with you?”

Akira looks over to Morgana lounging on the table by the stairs. “Yes.”

“Hm. Well then, I’ll accept—on one condition. I’d like you to return the favor... personally. Am I incorrect in assuming that you enjoyed our encounter last night?”

Akira’s mouth is dry as he fumbles for an answer. He still hasn’t figured that out for himself. His scarf feels like it’s strangling him.

After a long pause, he responds. “I accept.” He desperately hopes that Akechi won’t press him on that last question.

“Excellent. Are you free tonight?”

“Tonight?”

“Yes, tonight.”

“Um, yeah, I don’t have any plans.”

“Excellent, I’ll be there at seven. Dress nice.” He hangs up.

...Tonight? Dress nice? What could he possibly have in mind?

“So? What’d he say? What was that about tonight?”

“He said yes; he also said that he wants to see me.”

Morgana looks skeptical as he considers this. “Are you cool with this?”

Akira shifts on his feet. He’s actually… kind of excited for this, maybe, possibly, somehow? “Yeah.”

“Well, I guess that’s fine, as long as you’re careful around him.”

“Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: my name is Justice and I like naming things after myself


End file.
